1997 - A boat carrying dozens of Albanians seeking refuge in Italy strikes an Italian navy ship and sinks in Adriatic waters. A total of 52 bodies are recovered after the ship is hauled up from seabed in October.

1999 - Ousted president of Paraguay, Raul Cubas, leaves for political asylum in Brazil after the assassination of his vice president the week before sparked violent protests.

2001 - Soldiers from Uruguay become the first armed U.N. troops to set up camp in Congo in an effort to end the 2 1/2-year civil war.

2003 - Recent collapse of three companies involved in pyramid schemes in the Philippines has cheated two million victims out of more than $2 billion they had collectively invested. Officials are calling it the largest pyramid fraud in the country's history.

2004 - Two women set off bombs at a children's store and bus stop in the Uzbek capital, capping 12 hours of mayhem that kill 19 people in this former Soviet republic. The violence, including two assaults on police and an explosion at a bomb-making hideaway, also marks the first outbreak of terrorism in this majority Muslim country since the secular government became a staunch U.S. ally after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

2005 - Iraq's lawmakers fail to choose a parliament speaker in a session marked by shouting and finger-pointing, unveiling tensions that have left Iraq without a government two months after its historic elections.

2006 - Charles Taylor is flown to Sierra Leone, opening the way for the former Liberian president to become the first African head of state tried for war crimes by an international court.

2008 - Zimbabweans vote on whether to keep the ruler blamed by opponents for their country's economic collapse, though President Robert Mugabe's challengers claim the election was rigged even before the polls opened.

2009 - Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir receives a red-carpet welcome in Qatar as he arrives to attend an Arab summit in his most brazen act of defiance against an international arrest warrant on charges of war crimes in Darfur.

2010 - Terror returns to the heart of Russia, with two deadly suicide bombings on the Moscow subway at rush hour. At least 38 people are killed and more than 60 wounded in the morning blasts, the first such attacks in Moscow in six years.

2011 - A sweeping array of world powers -- from the United States to the United Nations, from the Arab League to NATO -- speak from the same script in forcefully calling for Libya's Moammar Gadhafi to step down.

2012 - Sunni Muslim rulers largely shun an Arab League summit hosted by Shiite-led Iraq, illustrating how powerfully the sectarian split and the rivalry with Iran define Middle Eastern politics in the era of the Arab Spring.

2013 - Pope Francis veers from the message of his predecessor and praises "the friendship of so many Muslim brothers" during a Good Friday procession dedicated to the plight of Christians in the Middle East.